Hello! As you may have guessed from the name of this blog, my name is Liz and I am fascinated by song lyrics. I hope you enjoy my waxing lyrical about lyrics and about music generally. I also review albums and gigs and have interviewed several wonderful musicians. Enjoy!

Wednesday, 11 July 2012

Mountains and memories: Nanci Griffith and Tina Turner

Hello!

I am very sorry that I haven't blogged for a while, but I was away on a Duke of Edinburgh's Award expedition at the weekend, and since then I have been completely exhausted.

However, I had an amazing time! I was very homesick at first, as I often am on these things, but I soon got used to being away from home and I began to really appreciate the sheer beauty of some of the places we visited.

We were up in the Lake District and we saw mountains, tarns, waterfalls, many sheep, some cows and all sorts of wildlife from rabbits and deer (I didn't personally see the deer, but other people in my group did) to swallows and spiders.

It was a brilliant and unforgettable experience. Not least because I was part of a wonderful group - we all really got to know each other over the weekend and became good friends. There are four of us, and we all worked together to achieve what we wanted to achieve. I will be doing another expedition next week with the same group, and I am really looking forward to it ♥ ☺

A song which kept coming back into my head was These Days In An Open Book by Nanci Griffith.

When I have more time and am less tired I will definitely do a long blog post all about this woman because I think she is amazing ♥

I was brought up listening to her music because my parents are fans, and I came to really love her myself. It was my dream to see her live in concert, and that dream came true in March this year when I got to go and see her perform at Salford Quays as a treat for my eighteenth birthday.

Needless to say, I was very, very happy. She was phenomenal. She sung as beautifully as ever, and she told little stories to introduce all of the songs. Some of these stories I hadn't heard before, and they really helped me to understand the songs better.

I find These Days In An Open Book so upbeat and positive and this particular performance which I have embedded is brilliant; she just seems so happy and you can tell the song and its lyrics mean so much to her and she takes so much pleasure in singing them.

Another song which stuck in my head over the weekend was We Don't Need Another Hero by Tina Turner. I can't really find a decent video to embed, but there are various versions on YouTube. I like it; not enormously, but I do like it.

I had listened to a lot of Eighties songs including this one on the way up to the Lake District; including many that I like more than this one. However, for some reason this song really stuck in my head when we were climbing one of the mountains and it was drizzling and I kept having to spur myself on to keep going, and I felt like crying out, "Is this all or nothing?!" like she shouts in the song. Silly, I know, but I couldn't get that bit out of my head!

Anyway, we had an amazing time ☺ And all the long, hard climbs were worth the effort for the views we got from the top, and for the sense of achievement at the end ♥

Today I went to see the Shakespeare play A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester with a group from my college. It was enjoyable, but not as good as As You Like It, which I saw at the Royal Exchange last year.

However, the Royal Exchange is a unique and fantastic theatre; it is theatre "in the round"; the performance space is round and everyone sits in circles watching the action unfold in the middle, which gives it a more three-dimensional feel, I think.

I hope you enjoyed this blog and maybe have been inspired to try a Duke of Edinburgh's Award, or go to a quirky theatre... or maybe just sit back and listen to some amazing music ☺

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About Me

Hi! I'm Liz.
I'm a fourth-year student of French and Spanish at the University of Manchester. I spent a year teaching English in France and studying in Spain. I've also studied in China.
I am Fiction Editor at Miracle Magazine and I write for The Mancunion, Cuckoo Review, The Cadaverine and Third Year Abroad. I love languages, music, photography, film making, stargazing and cats.